Tallahassee resident Teresa Fillmon ends her days listening to machine gun fire and exploding shells from her eastern Ukraine home.

For the last 17 years, Fillmon has made it her work to bring a better life to the under-served orphans of the eastern European country. From 1998 to 2011, she, her husband Rich, a board of directors and volunteers supported orphans from a home in Dzerhinsk, Ukraine. There they provided clothing, shoes and medical care to about 400 orphans.

In 2011, when they opened the Christian ministry, His Kids Too center, they started working with about 5,300 orphans, providing Bible camps, medical care, tutoring, cooking classes and church services.

Fillmon and her children, Dallas, Lydia, Haley, as well as James Artur and Alla, have spent their summers in Ukraine assisting with the ministry since 2000. James Artur and Alla were both adopted in the Ukraine.

Fillmon developed a passion for the former Soviet bloc country when she began her humanitarian efforts there about 20 years ago. Ever since a friend encouraged her to visit in 1998, she's had a presence there. Now she and her husband own two homes there as well as the center.

"Once I came here I just fell in love with the people and the landscape," she said. "They just needed help and I would just see that the government wasn't capable of helping them."

"I just felt as though I could do it," she added.

But Fillmon has had to switch gears during the last year. The government moved the orphans to safer parts of Ukraine in the west to avoid the fighting between Russian separatists and Ukrainian government forces near her home Dzerhinsk. It's a regular occurrence for Fillmon to hear gun fire and bombing during the day and night.

Since last spring, Ukraine authorities say more than 8,000 people have died in the conflict. The Russian government denies supporting the separatists. A cease fire was called in February but is regularly violated. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry will meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Sochi on Tuesday. It's Kerry's first visit to the country since the fighting began.

Instead of working with children as she has for years, Fillmon is now on the front providing Ukrainian forces with food and showers and even washes their fatigues.

Each month Fillmon and her center give away food baskets to displaced people.

"Some of these people literally fled with literally a small bag of things," Fillmon told the Tallahassee Democrat via Skype on Monday.

Fillmon said the bombing has been difficult and disconcerting.

"We need a lot of help," she said. She's been in contact with the U.S government, giving them information on what is really going on in the war-torn section of the country.

"They need to stop giving Russia these ultimatums, they need to give them some sort of consequence," she said.

Fillmon said she first became scared about a year ago when the Ukrainian flag was removed from the government building in Dzerhinsk, followed by several months of separatist control. Dzerhinsk is under Ukrainian authority now, Fillmon said.

"Now with Ukrainian military here, I'm actually not scared and maybe I should be," she said. "I know that we have a lot of militia here."

She continues to feed soldiers and plans on returning to Tallahassee soon to visit family.